All Work and No Play

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Title: All Work and No Play
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, Teal’c, Samantha Carter
Word Count: 9912
Categories: gen, humor, team
Spoilers: none; set during early S3
Warnings: none
Summary: Two occasions when SG-1 joined in with local sporting events and got more than they bargained for.


The jungles of PR4-309, otherwise known as Prakawat Buri, were less humid than Jack had anticipated from the MALP images. When he mentioned as much to the rest of the team, Daniel wondered out loud whether they happened to be visiting during the planet’s dry season. That idea, along with the people and the architecture of the planet, put Jack in the mind of Southeast Asia. He’d only visited that area of the globe a few times, but somehow he’d always managed to do so during the monsoon season. It had been… very wet.

If they had happened to turn up on Prakawat Buri in the drier of its seasons, Jack was going to be grateful for the continued spate of good luck. The team had visited nearly half a dozen worlds in as many weeks, and all of them had been easygoing, pleasant missions with nary so much as a raised voice occurring during them. And while Jack would never look a gift mission in the mouth, he was actually started to get a bit antsy; things never went so well for so long. Something was bound to go sideways soon.

The Halai people of Prakawat Buri seemed unlikely to be the ones to break the team’s winning streak, though. They were warm and hospitable, welcoming SG-1 like long-lost friends instead of complete strangers of a foreign appearance. It took Daniel approximately twenty minutes to suss out their origins, informing the team that the Halai ancestors were probably related to the ancient Thai people back on Earth.

Daniel also admitted to having limited knowledge of both the culture and the applicable time period from which the Halai descended, which somehow meant that he was even more fascinated by them. Since the entire directive for their mission this time actually was to just make friends, Jack simply rode the wave, and the team spent the whole morning interacting with various members of the Halai community.

Daniel was in full cultural exchange mode, notebook and tape recorder maxed out as he took full advantage of the team being on a safe planet inhabited by friendly people with nothing more expected of them but to play nice. Carter even got in on the action, meandering off with a group of Halai scientists to visit the nearby agricultural school, Teal’c patiently tagging along as bodyguard.

They all came back together for a large, communal lunch, eaten alfresco in one of the many squares the town featured. Daniel and Carter compared notes during the meal, each thoroughly excited for very different, if equally mundane, reasons. After initially listening in for any indications of relevant topics—namely weapons or defensive technologies—and not hearing any, Jack tuned them out and focused on the activity around the square instead.

The Halai treated lunch as a languid and social affair, everyone eating outside their homes on covered patios that overlooked the square, or congregating in the same manner outside of restaurants. Everyone ate at their leisure and lingered once the meal was through, chatting and drinking a spiced tea that, despite being served warm, still managed to cool Jack down. He was pondering the mechanics of that minor mystery when some of the kids who had been running around, not needing the same digestion break as the adults, began setting up what looked like a game in the square in front of him.

Two of the kids each held a ball—one red and the other blue—while a few others worked together to stretch out a net. It was clear that the game was often played in the square, since there were holes cut into the stone pavers that the poles at each end of the net easily and snuggly slid into. The way the net sat so that its bottom edge brushed the ground reminded Jack of a tennis net, though this one wasn’t that wide or high. For most of the kids, it came up to their waists, and would probably have been closer to mid-thigh on an adult.

As he watched, the group of kids split into two teams and, after what looked like an intense game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (though with hand gestures Jack didn’t recognize), the game began. At first it just looked like pandemonium, the two balls flying over the net with wild abandon amid shrieks and squeals. But after a few rounds, Jack thought he had sussed out the basic rules.

It was around that time that the rest of the team found their attention drawn to the spectacle as well.

“A friendly post-lunch game?” Daniel asked.

“Looks pretty serious to me,” Jack replied, wincing faintly as he watched one of the young players drop into a split in order to keep a ball from touching the ground.

“You figure out the rules, sir?”

“From what I can tell, it’s a bit like volleyball in that you don’t want the ball to touch the floor on your side, but you do want it to touch the floor on the other side.” He gestured in a ‘like that’ manner when the blue ball hit the floor on the side of the net to their right and the team on that side groaned. “But I think you have one ball that’s yours and the other is the other team’s? And you have to keep your ball from hitting your side while also trying to get the other team’s ball down on their side.”

“It appears one may only use one’s feet to move the balls around,” Teal’c advised as a small girl completed an impressively acrobatic bicycle kick to send the red ball back the way it had come.

“That’s what it looks like, yeah,” Jack agreed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come across a sport quite like this before. I wonder what its origins are.”

Daniel’s tone was alarmingly distracted, and Jack turned to see him wearing his “I Don’t Know What This Means and I Must Now Find Out” frown. Jack wasn’t sure whether he was more worried that Daniel would interrupt the kids to bombard them with questions, or that he would suddenly disappear, having wandered off to grill some adult about the “Nature of Sports in Halai Cultural Hierarchy” or something. It might take hours to relocate him if that happened.

Just as Jack was about to try to distract Daniel from the topic by asking him about the spiced tea, an even better distraction grabbed him by the hand. A few of the kids—some of whom Jack recognized as belonging to one of the families the team had visited with earlier—had come over to the team and were pulling them out into the square.

“I think we’re being drafted, sir,” Carter amusedly advised as the small girl of the bicycle kick tugged her onto the left side of the court.

“So long as we’re first draft,” Jack joked, letting himself be led toward the right side.

Daniel was likewise being pulled over to Carter’s side, though he looked surprisingly doubtful about the turn of events.

“What’s wrong, Dr. Jackson?” Jack teasingly asked. “I thought you’d be thrilled by this cultural immersion moment.”

“Aren’t you always saying that there’s no better way to understand a culture than to participate in it?” Carter asked in an echo of his sentiments, the smile she aimed at Daniel deceptively polite.

She glanced Jack’s way, and they shared a knowing look. Jack had lost count of the number of times they’d all gotten roped into ridiculous, humiliating, and/or dangerous situations specifically because Daniel had made that same argument and they’d listened. It wouldn’t be so bad for the ill-fitting shoe to be on the other foot for a change. Metaphorically speaking, this time.

Teal’c had been pulled over to join Jack on the right-side team, and he, too, seemed unmoved by Daniel’s reticence.

“We will in fact learn much from our participation in these games, Daniel Jackson,” he said, tone laced with irony that only the team would recognize.

“I know that,” Daniel replied, somewhat testily. “I just…” He hesitated, glancing down before he answered. “I’m just not that good with my feet.”

“That’s okay, Daniel Lan.” The little boy who had led Daniel onto the court, and who was still holding his hand, looked up at him with an earnest expression. “I’m not very good with mine, either. But I still play. It’s fun.”

And if that wasn’t the cutest damn thing Jack had ever seen. Carter was watching the little boy in an openly adoring way, and Jack made an only partially joking mental note to check her pack for strays before they left.

Daniel, clearly having been a bit taken aback by the unexpected and very sincere expression of kindness, blinked down at the boy for a beat. Then he quickly collected himself and smiled, giving the boy’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“You’re right; it’ll be fun,” he said. “What do we need to do?”

After a few minutes of their respective teams talking strategies—which, at least on Jack and Teal’c’s side, boiled down to a very succinct “don’t let the balls touch the ground”—they were ready to play. Though the game had looked relatively simple while watching from the sidelines, Jack found that keeping track of both balls while also not being able to use his hands was harder than he’d anticipated. He fumbled the first ball that came his way, and was surprised when the fiends on the other side of the net saw it as a weakness and began targeting him.

And by fiends, he meant the children. Daniel and Carter seemed to be having an easier time of it than he was, despite Daniel claiming to be bad with his feet, but the kids were absolutely ruthless. After the fourth time that both of the balls were quite deliberately launched his way at the same time, he almost wanted to call a truce and beg off, blaming his bad knee or his old age or something. None of the kids knew Teal’c was basically twice his age; he could fake it and go back to his tea.

But then he caught the amused twinkle in Carter’s eyes as he missed yet another pass and knew would rather fight to the death than admit defeat. He did casually work his way to the back of the group, however, thereby making it much harder for him to be targeted. After that, things seemed to go more smoothly.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be too little too late. Jack hadn’t been keeping score—wasn’t even sure how the score was tallied—but a ball hit the ground again on his side of the net and all the kids on his team slumped in defeat. On the other side of the makeshift court, Carter and Daniel were grinning, surrounded by their yelling and bouncing teammates. Carter was magnanimous in victory, softening her grin into a smile as she firmly shook Jack’s had over the net.

“Good game, Carter.”

“You, too, sir.”

Jack turned to Daniel. “Not good with your feet, huh?”

“I didn’t exactly do much,” Daniel replied. “The kids won it.”

Jack bobbed his head in agreement and started back to the table the team had been sitting at before being drafted. He stopped when he felt a tug on the hem of his shirt. Looking down, he saw one of the kids from the winning side staring up at him with a solemn expression.

“You have lost, Jack Lan,” she said in a very serious tone. “You have to come with us to be sacrificed.”

She pointed back past the ball court to the center of the square, which was formed by a stone platform raised up from the rest of the square by two levels, like the beginnings of a step pyramid the locals had never bothered to finish. The other kids from Jack’s team were already making their way up to the top, with another leading a confused Teal’c in that direction. Jack glanced over at Daniel, only to see that he was studying the group on the platform with a frown.

“Daniel?”

“I think this is part of the play, Jack,” he quietly responded.

“Kids pretending to sacrifice each other is play?”

“It can be,” Daniel advised. “Lots of cultures modify their more brutal rituals as they mature, whether by translating them into new versions without the brutality, or by pantomiming them. The rituals can be sanitized and maintained as actual religious practices, but they also can be turned into play, like when they’re codified into sports.” He gestured to the platform. “I mean, look: only the kids we were playing with are congregating on the platform. No adults are coming over or really even paying attention, and I highly doubt these kids are actually about to kill each other.”

“We hope,” Jack said under his breath.

“This could be good.”

Daniel’s tone had turned excited, and Jack gave him a wary frown. “In what way?”

“Whatever they do, whatever practices they’ve kept, those should reflect the most important aspects of the sacrificial rites they once followed,” Daniel explained, growing more animated as he went. “No doubt this culture once practiced human sacrifice; it was common enough among ancient cultures on Earth. And this game could have been used to determine who would be sacrificed—like the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame appears to have sometimes been. That would account for how this game and the play sacrifice are still connected.”

Jack stared at him for a few seconds, expressionless. “What I’m hearing is that you once again want us to go along with an alien ritual.”

“Yes,” Daniel confirmed with an emphatic nod. “Please.”

Jack looked over at Teal’c, who was standing motionless halfway to the platform. He was watching Jack with a calm gaze while the small child who had been leading him away pulled at Teal’c’s hand with his full body weight, attempting to move him. From what Jack could see on the platform, there didn’t appear to be weapons of any kind involved, so he wasn’t too worried about anyone being in danger, intentional or otherwise. But he’d so hoped they wouldn’t have to participate in any rituals this time. He sighed.

“Fine. But no pictures.”

“But I have to properly document the anthropological practices of the native population,” Daniel argued, just a touch too innocently.

“He does have a point, sir,” Carter added. “What’s the point in you participating if we don’t thoroughly document the ritual for future research purposes?”

They were ganging up on him again. For just a split second, Jack idly wished for a dangerous mission. Carter and Daniel couldn’t tag team him if they were busy shooting bad guys or blowing things up. Usually, anyway; they were both annoyingly good at multitasking under pressure.

After one last muted glare at his scientists, he turned away and let the little girl who had stopped him lead him to the platform. Once they got even with Teal’c, Jack gave him a weary sigh.

“Looks like we’re going to die today, Teal’c.”

Teal’c tilted his head in consideration, before falling into step beside him. “Very well.”

They climbed up onto the platform, where they were directed to sit side by side at the end of the line of the rest of their defeated teammates. Though Jack was relieved to discover that there wasn’t a costume change involved in these particular rites, he wasn’t sure the clay pots that he spotted were any better, given what they held. There were larger ones with what looked like charcoal powder in them, along with smaller ones filled with either thin paint or thick ink in bright blue. From how the kids from their team were already being decorated, it looked like Jack and Teal’c would be getting their faces and hands painted. He just hoped whatever they were using wouldn’t stain.

Three kids tackled each person’s paint at a time, one working on the face while one each worked on a hand. The face paint was pretty simple and consistent across the board, from what Jack could see. Each person had the charcoal-like substance spread in a horizontal line across their eyes, from hairline to hairline. Jack tried not to flinch as tiny fingers delicately spread the stuff over and around his closed eyes.

Face done, Jack opened his eyes in time to spot the little girl on Teal’c’s other side turn to him with a regretful expression.

“I’m very sorry we lost, Teal’c Lan,” she sadly said. “I really didn’t want you to get sacrificed.”

Teal’c gave her a regal bow of his head. “We battled to the best of our abilities,” he solemnly told her. “It is an honorable end.”

“Yes, it is,” the girl replied, sighing with all the battle-weariness of a seasoned Marine.

Jack felt his lips twitch, wondering just how many times the girl had been “sacrificed” during the game. Clearly enough that it was old hat for her now, just something to endure. He smiled to himself at the thought of the kids around him retiring for the Halai equivalent of a juice box and a snack after they finished ‘dying.’

The light tickle of a brush across the back of his hand returned his focus to the work being done there. While the charcoal stuff hadn’t had a smell, the paint did, though it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a bit like ink mixed with juice, a slightly oily, fruity scent. Though each of Jack’s hands were worked on by a different kid, the patterns on them were close to identical, an undulating mesh of swirls and waves and diamonds. Jack wasn’t sure if the designs had any specific meaning, or if they were just random ones that had become the standard to use over the years. Regardless, Daniel took particular pains to document each person’s paint with his camcorder, no doubt believing that there was some significance, however far removed from it origins the practice might actually be.

Once all the necessary paint was applied, everyone was directed to lie down on their backs, still side by side. Jack was squinting up at the bright sky when something floated across his line of sight and he startled slightly. Opening his eyes a bit more and looking down at himself, he saw that it was a flower petal, white and roughly the size of his thumbnail. More of them fell on him as one of the kids walked up and down the line of sacrificial lambs, tossing the petals over them like some kind of funereal version of a flower girl.

Finally, one of the older kids stood in front of the line, his back to them, and chanted something in the native tongue. Jack risked a glance to the side, wondering if Daniel had gotten any of it and would know what was said. It didn’t look like it, if his furrowed brow was anything to go by, but Jack also knew he’d gotten the incantation on tape and would pull whatever references required to figure it out once they got back home. So eventually Jack might know how he’d died.

He looked back over at Teal’c and watched another of the older kids, a girl this time, carefully lay a large red flower head on Teal’c’s chest, just over his heart. She stepped over to Jack and did the same to him before joining the boy who had given the chant, both of them now facing the line of the losing team.

The girl looked up and down the line, then said in a grave tone, “Thank you for your sacrifice.”

There were a few seconds of silence, then the kids who were lying down popped back up, shaking off the flowers covering them and laughing as they darted off to play elsewhere. The two older kids gathered up the pots of charcoal and ink that had been used, and rushed after them. The little girl beside Teal’c paused long enough to fling her arms around him and give him a tight squeeze, then she dashed away, too, yelling out for her friends to wait for her.

It was a very sudden shift in atmosphere, and Jack blinked as the final kids from the group disappeared from the square.

“Well that was a little anticlimactic,” he said.

“Actually, I found it kind of disturbing, sir.”

Jack turned to find Carter’s gaze moving uneasily around the platform. He eyed her with mild surprise.

“Carter, it was a bloodless sacrifice. What’s disturbing about that?”

“It’s kids playing at death, sir,” she answered bluntly. She picked up one of the fallen flower heads and held it out in her palm, the red bright against her white skin. “It’s symbolic, but that doesn’t make it any less unsettling. This flower no doubt took the place of the actual killing blow: a knife to the heart, or cutting it out, based on the location. They probably had no idea that’s what they were representing, but that honestly makes it seem worse.”

Jack hadn’t really thought about it that way, but he could see her point. Still, what they’d just participated in was normal for kids, and pretty tame compared to other such playtimes he’d gotten roped into over the years.

“It’s no different than kids back home playing superheroes or soldiers,” he pointed out.

“Jaffa children often play at being soldiers for their god, and battle other ‘enemy’ Jaffa children,” Teal’c advised. “In this way they not only learn how to be soldiers, but also deepen their devotion to the Goa’uld they serve. I did much the same when I was a child.”

“Death being part of play is common across almost all cultures,” Daniel added with a nod. “Just like everything else, getting to play at it helps prepare kids for how to deal with it when they eventually encounter it for real.”

“I get that,” Carter replied, “and I know that there are lots of cultural and social reasons why it happens, and that you’ll probably be able to map out the exact ancient practices the Halai once followed just by analyzing what you saw here.” She sighed and tossed the flower head back on the platform before wiping her hands on her pants. “It still weirds me out.”

“Understandable,” Daniel said.

Jack had been rubbing at the back of his hands, not entirely surprised when the ink there didn’t immediately smear. He licked a finger and repeated the action, only for the ink to remain stubbornly put. After putting a bit more effort into it and basically scrubbing at his skin to no effect, he started to panic ever so slightly.

“Daniel?”

“Yeah?”

“This ink isn’t coming off.”

Jack held up his hands and Daniel bent over them, squinting as he pushed his glasses up his nose. Daniel’s eyes moved from his hands to Teal’c’s and then back again, before Jack saw realization dawning on his face, along with a healthy dose of fear.

“Ah, I don’t think it’s going to.” Jack stared at him.

“What do you mean you don’t think it’s going to?”

“I’m pretty sure that whatever they used on you is related to henna, and it… doesn’t come off right away.”

“Daniel.”

“It could take days. Or weeks. Depending on the type of ink and application process used.”

Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Daniel, I can’t go around with bright blue designs on the back of my hands. I’m pretty sure this is against Air Force regulations.” He held his hands up in front of him, the backs facing Daniel, and glared at him.

“I—” Daniel cut off, eyes moving behind Jack and Teal’c.

Jack turned to see the same little girl from before, the one who had hugged Teal’c, running up to them. She was carrying something in both hands, wrapped up in what appeared to be a white napkin. She huffed her way up the steps and set the napkin on the ground, carefully opening it up to reveal four large cookies of some sort.

“We were having phanom and I realized you didn’t get any,” she told them in a breathless voice.

Jack smiled to himself; it looked like the kids had gotten a juice box and a snack after their ritualized play. The little girl handed a cookie to each of them, with a pert little “there you go” before she crumpled the napkin back up and ran off again without a backwards glance.

“I love that kid,” Jack said, looking adoringly at the cookie he now held and pretending the backs of his hands weren’t covered in semi-permanent blue ink. “We should adopt her.”

“A team kid, sir?” Carter asked with a smile.

“Why not? I mean, she brought us cookies.”

“I don’t think she’d come with cookies, Jack.”

“Too bad,” Jack said around a mouthful. “These are really good.”

There were murmurs of agreement as everyone else took their own bites. Jack finished his and brushed away the few crumbs he’d dropped, knocking loose a few flower petals that were still clinging to him at the same time. It was mid-afternoon by that point, and the team needed to be back at the SGC within the hour. Their post-game sacrifice moment seemed a natural stopping point, anyway, so Jack had Daniel start the goodbyes.

After promising that some of their people would return to visit the Halai again, the team headed for the Gate. Jack had half-heartedly attempted to remove the black from around his eyes, hoping maybe that would at least clean off, but didn’t fight with it much. He figured if he had to go back with some decoration, he should just go back with all of it and give everyone the full experience. Daniel had evidence of it all, anyway, and Teal’c hadn’t bothered trying to clean up, so the story was going to be out there no matter what. He just hoped there’d be some kind of cleaner back home that would work on his various markings without taking his skin with it.

Jack led the way through the Gate, stopping on the ramp once the entire team made it through. Hammond had been waiting for them in the Gate room, and Jack watched his confused gaze roam over his and Teal’c’s appearances.

“Sir, I regret to inform you that Teal’c and I were Killed In Action during our mission to PR4-309,” Jack solemnly told him.

“You were, Colonel?”

“Yes, sir. The natives took us down in ritualistic battle, and we were sacrificed as the losers. It was vicious, sir. Absolutely brutal. There were flowers. And we each got a cookie at the end.”

One of the men on security detail in the room snickered at Jack’s comment, and Jack turned to him with an overly serious expression.

“These are the marks of my last rites, Corporal,” he said in mock indignation, gesturing to his face and hands. “Show some respect.”

The corporal gamely schooled his expression into one of sorrow and straightened to near attention. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

“Thank you, Corporal.”

“Any time, sir.”

“We played a game with the local children and the losing side was ‘sacrificed’ afterward,” Daniel clarified for the general, who was watching them all with both fondness and exasperation. “I documented it all, and I think the anthropology department is going to be fighting amongst themselves to see who gets to go back for the longer term surveys.”

“I’m glad to hear that I don’t actually have to complete the K.I.A. paperwork,” Hammond dryly replied.

“No, sir. Not this time,” Jack said.

Hammond gave him a look that Jack was sure was amused, but he only directed them out of the room with a motion of his head. “Go get cleaned up. We’ll debrief in half an hour.”

“Uh, about that, General.” Jack dragged a hand through his hair, frowning when a few flower petals fell out of it and onto the Gate room floor. He held up the hand to show the general its blue back. “This stuff isn’t coming off.”

“Jack,” Hammond started in a warning tone.

“It really isn’t, sir,” Daniel said, backing Jack up. “I think it’s semi-permanent, and it’ll probably have to wear off over time.”

“We didn’t know until after it was already done, sir,” Carter added.

Hammond sighed. “Well, clean up as best you can, then. We’ll still debrief in thirty minutes.”

With a slight shake of the head, he strode from the room, disappearing into the hallway. Jack watched him go, then turned to his team.

“You think he’s mad?”


-000000-


The ink on Jack’s and Teal’c’s hands had almost completely faded by the time the team visited P53-883.

It was another recon mission with the express purpose of making nice with the natives, if there were any. The MALP had shown the Gate to be in an earthen chamber of some sort, though with a clearly visible exit leading directly outdoors. There were no obvious signs in the room of recent human visitation, but there also wasn’t anything to disprove it. As Daniel had pointed out, the fact that the doorway out wasn’t blocked could mean that it was being kept clear. Jack thought it was just as likely that there was nothing on the planet to block it, but he kept that to himself.

When they left the Gate chamber, they discovered that it was actually inside a small mound, the entrance facing west. Rounding it, they saw other mounds of varying sizes spread out over several acres of land to the east, dotted with fields filled with crops. And there were people: in the fields, on the mounds, and walking the roads between the mounds—including two headed directly toward them.

“What are we dealing with here, Daniel?” Jack asked, eyeing the men who were approaching them on the road that had circled around the Gate mound from its entrance and continued off in a straight line toward a much larger mound in the distance.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “The mounds remind me of the ones found in the Americas, built by the indigenous peoples there.”

“Which ones?”

“I don’t know.” Daniel shrugged, squinting around as though trying to pick out details that would help him identify the culture.

“Really?” Jack asked doubtfully. Daniel gave him an annoyed glance.

“There are kind of a lot of them, Jack.”

“Ballpark?”

“I mean, if I had to guess I would say North American of some kind, but I can’t be 100% sure.”

“That’s at least enough to start with,” Jack said.

The men who met them turned out to be the Gate guardians. They had been on their way to perform their daily services of tidying the chamber and completing a few cleansing rituals, and were quite surprised to find SG-1 waiting for them. They led the team into the city, past a number of mounds that Daniel studied with great intensity and quite a lot of mumbling under his breath. It was only once they passed by a square building with roof shaped kind of like a lopped off pyramid that Daniel turned to Jack, his expression having cleared.

“Jack, I think they’re Mississippian!” he said, as though that would mean anything to Jack.

“So they’re from Mississippi?”

“No, the Mississippian civilization was an inter-related group of indigenous peoples native to North America that sprung up around the Mississippi River. They were known for their earthworks.” He gestured to the mounds around them. “Their largest city, Cahokia, was in what is now Illinois; I visited it once when I was living in Chicago. It’s a hugely influential archaeological site for pre-Columbian research.”

“Anything we should be worried about?” Carter asked, beating Jack to the punch.

“I don’t really know that much about the Mississippians,” Daniel admitted. “Native American cultures weren’t my area of focus, and even when I did study them, I was in South America, not North.”

“So you’ve got nothing?” Jack asked.

“Specifically? No. But in general terms we should probably be okay?” Daniel shrugged. “I mean, these people were probably taken from Earth a thousand plus years ago; who knows how their culture has shifted in that time. Let’s just talk to them and see how things go.”

It just so happened that things went quite well. The people called themselves the Emtoha, and their chief’s name was Tillanka. He was very happy to welcome the team to his city, and bid them to explore it to their heart’s content. He even provided a guide, a woman named Ocantis, to show them around and answer any questions they might have.

Jack let Daniel take lead, working with Ocantis to investigate every corner of the mound city that struck his or Carter’s fancy. They met with farmers and scholars, priests and weavers, in a whirlwind tour that lasted a handful of hours.

While everyone was pleased to meet the team and readily answered all of Daniel’s and Carter’s many questions, none of them seemed all that interested in where the team had come from. Jack thought it a little odd, given that he got the impression these people didn’t get much in the way of visitors—especially ones that looked like SG-1–but he didn’t dwell on it. Not everyone cared about what happened beyond their little corner of the universe and, honestly? That didn’t seem like a bad thing.

It was late in the afternoon when Ocantis led them past a broad, open field surrounded by large trees. There were a number of people out in the field playing some kind of game, while spectators watched from the shade. Daniel stopped and asked Ocantis what was going on.

“This is petloma,” she advised. “It is a very popular game.”

“Could we stay and watch?” Daniel asked. “I’m very interested in your native sports.”

“Of course,” she courteously replied. “Let us move around to a better vantage point.”

Ocantis led them around to the side of the pitch where the majority of the spectators had gathered. The team found an open patch of grass under one of the larger trees and sat down, Jack stretching his legs out in front of him while he leaned back on his hands. They’d done a fair bit of walking that day, and his feet were aching slightly. He kind of wanted to take off his boots, but didn’t think that would be wise or appropriate. So instead he just wiggled his toes around inside them, hoping to ease the discomfort.

At first, the game didn’t make sense to Jack at all. That might have been due to its passing similarity to baseball and how that similarity made all the many differences seem much more discordant. But between his own observations and Ocantis’s explanations, he pieced together the rules.

Petloma resembled baseball or cricket, but really only in the “hit something with a stick” way. The stick in question was about the length of a standard bat, and while it was flattened like a cricket one, it wasn’t any wider than the widest part of a baseball one. The “ball” also wasn’t a ball, in that it was non-spherical and oddly angled, meaning that sometimes it went completely off target when the bat made contact along an edge, or it bounced weirdly when it hit the ground.

The pitcher stood about twenty feet away from the batter, while the other defensive players took up positions around the perimeter of the playing area. The batter could line up to hit either righty or lefty; Jack saw multiple hitters switch sides. Idly, he wondered if maybe having a dominant hand was less common among the Emtoha.

Instead of bags or a wicket for the batter to run to, there were sticks stuck into the ground at what seemed to be random distances from the batter’s position, in any given direction. Each stick had a flat wooden paddle at its top, at about mid-torso height. The color the paddle was painted denoted the stick’s point value: blue for the least, then yellow, orange, and red.

When the batter hit the ball, they could run to any of these sticks and get the points associated with it; the farther away the stick was, the higher the points. If they ran to the stick and back to their batting position, the points were doubled. For the defensive player to stop the batter from scoring, they had to hit the stick the batter was running to with the ball before the batter made it there. If the defensive player missed the stick, the batter automatically got the stick’s points. If the defensive player hit the batter, the batter got double the points. This meant that the batters could, if they hit the ball right, make it so that they would be running between the stick they were aiming for and the position where the ball landed, thereby making it nearly impossible for the defensive players to hit the stick without them having to pass the ball around first to get it to a teammate who had a clear shot.

Despite the complexity of the game and the number of spectators, the match up the team watched had all the atmosphere of a pick-up game. There was some friendly competitiveness, but nothing too serious, and everyone laughed off weird bounces of the ball or missed stick hits. Jack wasn’t entirely sure—language barrier and all—but based on tone, he thought he even heard some good-natured smack talk between the sides as well. It kind of felt like watching a laidback work softball league on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

So when the first game wrapped up and Daniel asked Ocantis if they could join in with the next that was about to get started, Jack didn’t intervene. To be honest, he was kind of interested in trying out the game himself. They’d been sitting for a while and he had been about to suggest that they return to their grand tour just to get moving again, but participating in the local sporting event was a much more appealing prospect than hearing about grain yields or weaving techniques.

Ocantis hesitated over Daniel’s request, though. That started to raise warning bells in Jack’s mind until she mentioned that the teams for the event had already been chosen, so she would have to see if one would be willing to let SG-1 play in their stead. She rose and wandered over to the players to do just that, after Daniel assured her that they wouldn’t be offended if anyone said no.

“Looking to do some cultural immersion again, Daniel?” Jack casually asked.

“I want to get into the game mechanics,” he absently replied, watching Ocantis as she talked with a couple of the players out on the field. “I don’t know of any sports of a similar origin like this anywhere on Earth, and even the parts that resemble sports we do know—like cricket or baseball—wouldn’t be developed until literally hundreds of years after the Emtoha’s ancestors would have been brought here. Given that we haven’t found any records of this sport in Mississippian digs, I suspect it originated here, which makes it wholly unique.”

“Fascinating. But do you really need to play it?”

“It’s like I’ve said before, you can never really know a culture—”

“Until you practice it yourself,” Carter finished for him with a smile.

“I believe you will get your chance, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c advised him. “I saw the players Ocantis was talking with give her a nod, which usually means agreement.”

Ocantis was walking back toward them, though Jack couldn’t read her expression. She clasped her hands in front of her as she reached them.

“One of the teams has agreed to let you take their place,” she said. “Usually there are at least seven people per side, so three of your opponents will sit out as well. It will make the game go a bit faster, but you will still get plenty of time to play.”

“That’s perfect,” Daniel quickly replied. “We don’t really need to go through a full-length match anyway; we just want to get the experience of playing.”

Ocantis nodded in understanding and led them over to meet the other team. There were three men and one woman: Nagota, Suneri, Emaris, and Kiona, respectively. They all shook hands and introduced themselves, then Nagota asked Jack to pick between a boar and a bird.

Perplexed by the request, Jack hesitantly picked the boar. Nagota then tossed something in the air, and Jack realized what the request had been for by the time it hit the ground, landing with the bird showing. They were choosing who would go first, and the other team had won the toss, which had been decided by what looked like a thin cross-section of a branch, with a bird painted on one side and, presumably, a boar on the other.

After a few seconds of debate, the SG team decided that they would rotate pitching duties, since none of them felt particularly confident in throwing the oddly-shaped ball. They also quietly agreed to keep it casual, since that was the mood of the day so far and no one wanted to offend their hosts by taking things too seriously. Sternly reminding himself of that fact, Jack took position near the edge of the field as Daniel started them off.

His pitch was more of a toss, but it did make it to Suneri, who hit it toward Carter. She was bested by a weird bounce, and he was able to make it from an orange stick and back to the proverbial batter’s box. After going through the entire line up—Kiona batting clean-up—Jack estimated that the opposing team had scored twenty two points. Not insurmountable, but a tough start for his team, who had never played before.

Jack batted first and managed to make it to a yellow stick and back, netting four points. Daniel was next, and made it to a yellow stick but not back, followed by Carter who went for a red stick and made it, but only just. Teal’c was last, and—fittingly for their attempt at playing it casual—gently knocked the ball to one side of the field before loping to a red stick on the other side. A respectable sixteen points on the board, the teams switched sides again.

They continued on in that way, Jack’s side getting better with every round but Nagota’s side managing to stay ahead, though not running away with it. Jack suspected that if the natives had wanted to, they would probably have blown his team away early on, but they were keeping it a friendly match instead, a gesture he appreciated.

His side was definitely holding back, too, despite their disadvantage as novices. All of them had a competitive streak—though Daniel’s was probably better labeled as stubbornness—and had to actively work to suppress it when it was inappropriate for the situation. Personally, he had several more notches he could kick up to, and he was positive that Teal’c was, comparatively speaking, barely putting in any effort.

That changed somewhere in the eighth round. They were only six points down at that point, with Teal’c up to bat. Jack had watched him get more and more comfortable with each at bat, seemingly having figured out how to calculate the ways the misshapen ball would move. Just before Suneri pitched, Jack saw Teal’c’s eyes flick to his left and knew what the big guy was planning. Teal’c walloped the ball across the field, aimed toward a gap between Nagota and Emaris, and took off at speed for a red stick in the opposite direction. He had reached it and was already on his way back to the batter’s box before Emaris had retrieved the ball.

Teal’c reached the batter’s box at a trot, a self-satisfied smile on his face that no one but the team would probably be able to read. Carter jogged over, grinning, and gave him a high-five as Jack and Daniel joined them.

“Nice hit, T. Very smooth.”

“Thank you, O’Neill.”

The native team was approaching, and Jack tensed at the mix of bafflement and concern in their expressions. In the mens’ expressions, anyway; Kiona’s face was stony. Daniel, still focused on Teal’c, only glanced briefly their way as he held out his hand to receive the ball from Emaris, ready for his next turn pitching. But Emaris simply shook his head, ball clutched at his side.

“You have won,” he said in a defeated tone.

Daniel looked around then, eyebrows raised in surprise. His expression was mirrored on Carter’s face, and they shared a look of delight.

“We won?” Carter asked.

“Yes, you have beaten us,” Nagota quietly confirmed.

Given how laidback the match had been, Jack thought he seemed unduly astonished by his team’s loss. Wariness blossomed, warm and tight, in Jack’s chest, and he studied the crowd gathered around the field. The spectators had swelled in number while the game had gone on, and all of them were now watching the two teams in stunned silence. Jack picked Ocantis out of a nearby group and was slightly alarmed to find her staring their way with wide-eyes, one hand pressed against her chest and the other over her mouth. Her eyes met his and she startled slightly, before turning and speed walking through the crowd and off out of sight.

Suddenly, Jack got the horrible feeling that his team weren’t participating in a friendly pick-up game like they’d originally believed. Or, at least, not one that anyone had actually thought they would win. It looked like there were going to be consequences to their unexpected victory.

“So, what did we win?” he asked, keeping his demeanor casual while coiled like a spring inside.

It was Kiona who spoke, her tone clipped. “The winners are given the honor of sacrifice.”

There was a moment of charged silence. Carter’s smile disappeared from her face like someone had wiped it off, Daniel’s eyebrows went from “surprise” high to “concern” low, and Teal’c’s smug body posture subtly shifted to defensive instead. Jack braced himself, mind running through their options.

“What do you mean by sacrifice?” Daniel hesitantly asked, throwing Jack a warning glance.

Jack was a bit irritated by the gesture. They’d just been told they were going to be sacrificed, and Daniel appeared to be worried about offending their hosts? Typical Daniel.

“The winners of petloma are considered the strongest and bravest of us all,” Nagota mechanically advised them. “Their sacrifice to the earth, the sky, and the water ensures that we will continue to experience prosperity and peace.”

It was just as Jack had feared—they’d won themselves a death—and he opened his mouth to advise the Emtoha that no one would be dying that day. But Daniel stopped him with a surreptitious hand on his arm and a pointed stare. Jack would’ve ignored him, but the shrewd look in Daniel’s eyes gave him pause. Whatever Daniel was planning, it wasn’t just to make the natives feel better. Jack debated internally for about two seconds before he gave Daniel a short, sharp nod. They’d try it his way first.

He just managed to hide his shock at Daniel’s next words, though Carter wasn’t as quick, giving Daniel an obvious double-take.

“We understand,” Daniel began. “And we accept our victory. However, we didn’t anticipate our deaths occurring today. Could we be given some time alone to prepare ourselves? We have specific practices that we must undergo before journeying to the afterlife.”

“Of course,” Suneri graciously replied.

“And our beliefs require that we only sacrifice ourselves after sunset; otherwise our souls will be trapped in the land of the living,” Daniel hastily added. “Will that be a problem?”

Nagota shook his head. “No, we do not have any rules around what time of a day a sacrifice must be made. You may die when you are ready.”

“Thank you,” Daniel said with a shallow bow.

Carter was studying him with a faint frown, and she glanced Jack’s way, a question in her gaze. Jack gave her the barest hint of a nod, signaling that they should follow Daniel’s lead for now, and she returned the gesture in understanding. Teal’c was looking between them all, posture at ease but alertness coming off of him in waves as he stayed ready for whatever call to action he might be given. Jack laid a hand on his shoulder and felt him relax slightly.

A minute later, Ocantis returned and bustled over to them, her shock more muted than it had been but still evident on her face. She consulted with Nagota in hushed whispers before turning to Jack and his team.

“I understand that you wish to have some time to prepare for your sacrifice,” she said. “I have a chamber that you may use. It is at the edge of the city, and will therefore afford you the privacy and quiet that you need for your preparations. Come.”

She waved them on without waiting for a response, leading them through the slowly dispersing and astonished crowds and out from the city. Jack was pleasantly surprised to find that she was taking them in the direction of the Gate, and crossed his fingers that their luck would hold out and the chamber she had for them would be near it.

Whoever’s gods happened to be watching them on this planet, they seemed to be benevolent ones, because Ocantis not only took them near the Gate, she took them to a chamber in a mound directly beside the one the Gate was in. After thanking them for their coming sacrifice and assuring them that they would be left alone until sundown, she bowed her way out of the chamber and disappeared.

Jack turned from the chamber entrance to level a bland stare Daniel’s way.

“Nothing to worry about, you say?”

To his surprise, Daniel actually looked a bit abashed. “I may have forgotten reading about archaeologists finding mass burials of human sacrifices in several of the mounds at Cahokia,” he reluctantly admitted.

“May have?”

“There wasn’t any archaeological evidence that the deaths were related to any kind of game or sport,” Daniel protested. “And none of the burials I can remember reading about were of seven people, so you can understand why I didn’t put two and two together.”

“Oh, yes. Very understandable,” Jack drawled.

“I did tell you Native American cultures aren’t my forte.”

“We aren’t blaming you, Daniel,” Carter reassured him, shooting Jack a borderline-insubordinate glare that he decided to let slide.

“Our opponents did not play with the effort I would expect from someone who truly wanted to win,” Teal’c pointed out. “Perhaps they wished us to be the sacrifice?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel mused, brow furrowed in contemplation.

Jack scoffed. “Well, what I know is that they just so happened to drop us right beside the Gate with promises that we’d be given all the privacy we want until sunset. So I suggest we get the hell out of here.” He looked at Daniel, who was still frowning. “I’m guessing you told them we could only die after dark to give us enough time to get away, right?”

“Yes…”

The tone was less direct than Jack would have liked, and he gave Daniel a once-over. He had that “Save Everybody” glint in his eyes that never boded well, especially when the team was already on the dangerous end of the stick.

“Daniel—” Jack started in warning.

“We could stay,” Daniel slowly replied. “Try to convince them to give up human sacrifices altogether.”

“Daniel, we did not come here to convert these people. Nor are we in the best position to do so, what with them expecting us to be dead in pretty short order.” He gave his watch a pointed glance; they were only about an hour and a half away from sunset.

“I don’t think it would be that difficult to convince these people to stop, Jack. I mean, look at their behavior.”

“You mean the behavior that got us lined up for the actual chopping block?”

Daniel let out an exasperated huff. “Stop being deliberately obtuse, Jack. Teal’c got it when he pointed out how the Emtoha played against us. There was no urgency to their game, no real desire to win. Now, sure, that could have been because we showed up and could serve as convenient replacements, but not a single person’s behavior makes me believe that’s what they were thinking.”

“How do you figure?” Jack asked, intrigued despite himself.

“They seemed way too surprised when we won; even the spectators were shocked. And if the other team really wanted us to win, they would have played much more poorly. It wasn’t even until the last at bat that we won, when Teal’c decided to finally show off.”

“I did not realize my actions would have such dire consequences,” Teal’c replied, somewhat regretfully.

“None of us did,” Carter assured him.

“And that’s my point,” Daniel continued. “If the Emtoha really wanted us to be the sacrifices in their stead, they could have purposefully played worse, or at the very least given the impression that they were really trying to win, thereby letting us feel like we could play harder, too.” He gave everyone a wry look. “I know we were all holding back because it was just a friendly game, but that means the Emtoha were, too, and that doesn’t make sense if they truly view being sacrificed as a great honor.”

“Maybe they don’t,” Jack countered. “Maybe, like all rational people, none of them actually want to die, but they’ve all been conditioned to believe that the sacrifices are necessary and so they still do it.”

“And that’s why we can probably convince them that they don’t have to do it at all,” Daniel confidently responded.

“You see, I don’t like that ‘probably’ part in this situation,” Jack countered with a wag of his finger. “That’s the variable that can get us strapped to a stone with our hearts cut out.”

“The Mississippians didn’t do that; you’re probably thinking of the Aztecs.”

Carter was looking at Daniel in disbelief. “So how would we die here?” she asked with enough inflected sarcasm that it made Jack oddly proud.

“Blunt force trauma, beheading, buried alive,” Daniel listed out in a clinical tone.

“Oh, much better.”

“I’m not saying that’s actually what’s going to happen!” Daniel ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Those are just some of the documented ways Mississippian human sacrifices were done.”

“Well, we aren’t going to find out which one they have in store for us,” Jack resolutely said. “We’re getting out of here now.”

“Jack—”

“Daniel, we are not arguing about this.”

“I’m not arguing, I’m telling you that we can convince these people to stop killing themselves, because it’s pretty clear they’re only still doing it because they always have.”

“Daniel—”

“Jack, please.”

“We’ll send someone back!”

Daniel’s mouth snapped shut and he stared Jack down with a suspicious gaze. “You mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it.” When Daniel just continued to watch him with narrowed eyes, he added, “Until we bumbled our way into the sacrificial line-up, we were perfectly safe here. So I have no problem sending back a team who isn’t scheduled to die, okay?”

“You believe that we could convince these people to end their sacrificial rites, O’Neill?”

“Yes, I do. Probably. But we who are about to die aren’t going to be the ones to attempt it. We are going to get back home.” He glared Daniel’s way, daring him to argue. “Okay?”

Daniel nodded. “Okay.”

“Good,” Jack said, deflating slightly, having expected more pushback and been braced for it. “Carter, poke your head out and see if anyone’s watching us.”

“Yes, sir.” She disappeared outside before returning a minute later. “Coast is clear as far as I can see, sir. There’s nobody around anywhere near us, and the few people I could see in the distance weren’t looking our way.”

“Small mercies,” Jack muttered. He waved everyone ahead of him. “Okay, let us cautiously and quietly head to the Gate.”

Teal’c led the way, and they snuck out of the chamber in a line, staying in the shadow of its mound before darting across the open space between it and the Gate one. They hurried inside, Teal’c already halfway through dialing by the time Jack made it in. Daniel still looked a bit put-out, but he didn’t look back when Jack motioned him through the Gate. Jack did, though, and he came through the Gate looking back over his shoulder.

Hammond walked into the room just as the Gate shut down behind Jack. He gave the team his customary once-over, eyes searching for wounds or worries. Not finding any, his gaze moved to Jack’s.

“Colonel? You’re back early.”

“New rule, General. SG-1 isn’t allowed to participate in off-world sporting events.”

“Did you die again, Colonel?” Hammond dryly asked.

“Was scheduled to, sir. Snuck away when we were given time to prepare ourselves and I decided none us were quite ready to die yet.”

“I appreciate you saving me the paperwork.”

Jack smiled to himself. The paperwork thing had become a running joke between Hammond and SG-1, and Jack liked to think it was his way of expressing fondness for the team that tended to give him the biggest headaches. And the biggest piles of said paperwork.

“Of course, sir,” Jack replied. “Always happy to make things easier for you.”

Hammond gave him a final bland look before turning to Daniel. “Are we going to need to lock P53-883 out of the dialing computer, Dr. Jackson?”

“No, sir. The Emtoha aren’t aggressive, we just got involved in something we didn’t realize the significance of. We can and should send another team to make contact with them.”

“Very well.” The general cast another look over the team as a whole. “Return your gear and meet me upstairs in one hour for your debriefing.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hammond headed back into the control room while the team went in the other direction, toward the armory. As they walked, Carter fell into step beside Jack, and he looked over to find her smiling at him.

“Rule 17, sir?”

He was at a loss for a beat, then he remembered and gave her an overly serious nod. “Yes, Carter. Rule #17: SG-1 isn’t allowed to participate in off-world sporting events.”

“We can still play games, though,” Daniel called back over his shoulder.

“Anything without gambling,” Jack agreed.

“Checkers, backgammon, chess.”

“All very riveting things, Daniel.”

“I’m partial to pinochle, myself,” Carter said.

Jack studied her with narrowed eyes. “You count cards, don’t you?”

“I can’t help it that I’m good at probabilities, sir,” she innocently replied.

“I take it back,” Jack told the team as they rounded a corner. “We can play any betting games that Carter’s good at, but only if she’s on our side.”

“Rule #18: Always bet on Sam?” Daniel quipped.

Teal’c looked back at Jack and Sam, one eyebrow raised. “Indeed.”